ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatchhttp://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/
Sat, 6 Jun 2020 10:09:24 -0500en-ushttp://backend.userland.com/rssMRC Gets Mad When Other Media Critics Use MRC Tacticshttp://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374124
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374124<br><p><img src="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/herridge.jpg" alt="" align="right" />The Media Research Center viciously smears journalists it despises all the time -- remember <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2374090/double-standard-mrc-frets-over-heckling-of-fox-news-reporter-but-it-cheered-cnn-sucks-chants/">how it cheered</a> those &quot;CNN sucks!&quot; chants from Trump rally attendees -- but God forbid that anyone should treat the MRC&#39;s favorite pro-Trump journalists with anything even remotely approaching that sort of hate.</p><p>Thus, we have Tim Graham devoting a May 16 <a href="https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2020/05/16/cbs-reporter-driving-democrats-crazy-because-she-came-fox">post</a> to fretting that CBS correspondent Catherine Herridge -- who used to work at Fox News -- was being criticized for advancing a pro-Trump narrative in the case of Michael Flynn:</p><blockquote><p>Can Fox News reporters ever truly succeed at liberal networks? Or is the Foxophobia so strong within the &quot;mainstream&quot; media that they are always suspicious? Some reporters succeed -- Major Garrett&#39;s still at CBS after a Fox News stint. But the guns are out for Catherine Herridge and her reporting on the Justice Department and the Michael Flynn case. </p><p>[...]</p><p>The Beasties offered this summary on Twitter: &quot;Democrats on Capitol Hill have grown particularly irked by Catherine Herridge&#39;s work, believing she&rsquo;s become a de facto clearing house for conservative conspiracy theorists who want to give their material the veneer of mainstream objectivity.&quot;</p><p>CBS, the &quot;veneer of mainstream objectivity.&quot; That&#39;s hilarious.</p></blockquote><p>Graham then made an unfortunate comparison: &quot;But it&#39;s not hard to imagine that Herridge is finding herself to be the new version of Sharyl Attkisson, where many stories are sidelined to the internet because they&#39;re too upsetting for liberals to grant the &#39;imprimatur of neutrality.&#39;&quot;<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p>Attkisson was <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2014/mrcattkisson.html">beloved by the MRC</a> a few years back for her anti-Obama reporting -- so much so that Graham and Co. overlooked her record of shoddy reporting and endorsement of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories and earned a <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2346177/sharyl-attkisson-gets-the-coveted-wnd-endorsement/">dubious endorsement</a> of her work from WorldNetDaily&#39;s Joseph Farah. Attkisson&#39;s relationship with WND grew so suspicious that we <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2359424/did-sharyl-attkisson-pay-wnd-to-write-fawning-stories-about-her-new-show/">had to wonder</a> if she was paying WND to do fawning &quot;news&quot; articles about her then-new TV produced by the right-wing TV station owner Sinclair. </p><p>The MRC has been <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2020/mrcfoxdefend.html">aggressively defending</a> Fox News lately, and that apparently goes for former Fox News employees who take that attitude and bias into the mainstream media. Though Graham noted that CBS has another Fox refugee on its staff in Major Garrett, the MRC has never really defended him the way it&#39;s doing for Herridge, though it did highlight a time in 2018 when Garrett <a href="https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2018/11/16/cbss-garrett-obama-white-house-demonized-fox-rest-press-didnt">portrayed</a> President Obama&#39;s criticism of Fox News during his presidency as equivalent to Trump&#39;s attacks on the entire &quot;liberal media.&quot;</p><p>If Graham thinks Herridge is the new Sharyl Attkisson, that doesn&#39;t exactly bode well for Herridge -- and demonstrates once again that the MRC cares only about forwarding its bias and nothing about advancing the news media, and it absolutely hates when other use MRC tactics against its friends. </p>http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/control.comment?a=render&blog_id=1035280&entry_id=2374124Sat, 6 Jun 2020 10:09:22 -0500ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatchMychal Massie Meltdown Watchhttp://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374123
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374123<br><blockquote><p><img src="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/massiewnd.jpg" alt="" align="right" />It&#39;s hard to find a lower species of life form today than Democrats holding political office. However, backstabbing, duplicitous Republicans will challenge the most reprobate Democrat any day of the week &ndash; and twice on Sunday when they&#39;re pretending to be the pious &ndash; for the title of &quot;America&#39;s most undesirable.&quot;</p><p>Democratic politicians are pernicious liars and godless mercenaries of Satan, but Republicans are no less pernicious and godless, in addition to being nauseatingly craven.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Why is the Mitch McConnell-led Senate allowing Clinton, Biden and Obama not to be held criminally accountable?</p><p>What kind of investigation is Attorney General Bill Barr running/overseeing when he comes out yet again, well ahead of the completed investigations taking place on his watch as AG, and tells We the People he doesn&#39;t expect the Russian probe will lead to criminal investigation of either Obama or Biden?</p><p>[...]</p><p>Republicans have perfected the art of greasing the tracks for Democrats to go unpunished in the face of incontrovertible evidence against them. Why is Obama allowed to strut around like a sissified-banty rooster, as he stutters and stammers his way through the fomenting of discord based upon skin color?</p><p>What plausible excuses can be offered for not holding Hillary Clinton criminally accountable in the murder of Tyrone Woods, Ambassador Stevens, Glen Doherty and Sean Smith in Benghazi? Why did Obama get away without even a slap on the wrist for his refusal to save the brave four men who were murdered in Benghazi?</p><p>[...]</p><p>Patriotic Americans have waited since President Reagan for a president who loved America and revered the American people. President Trump is fighting for us, and he&#39;s indeed worked mightily to &quot;Make America Great Again.&quot; It has been and continues to be Republicans who are backstabbing him and betraying us.</p><p>Senate Republicans are a contentious lot of blueblood elitists, and the Kevin McCarthy House Republicans are little more than country-club types genteelly feeding off We the People.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p><p>We voted for President Trump because we believed in him. It&#39;s time to start slashing the political throats of feckless RINO backstabbers who refuse to uphold the rule of law.</p></blockquote><p>-- Mychal Massie, May 18&nbsp; WorldNetDaily <a href="https://www.wnd.com/2020/05/reprobate-democrats-backstabbing-republicans/?ff_source=Twitter&amp;ff_medium=PostTopSharingButtons&amp;ff_campaign=websitesharingbuttons">column </a></p>http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/control.comment?a=render&blog_id=1035280&entry_id=2374123Fri, 5 Jun 2020 23:20:55 -0500ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatchMRC Tries, Fails To Bash Another Fact-Checker As 'Liberal'http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374120
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374120<br><p><img src="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/newsguard.jpg" alt="" align="right" />The Media Research Center&#39;s <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2373800/mrcs-war-on-factchecking-continues/">mission</a> to falsely identify fact-checkers who aren&#39;t explicitly right-wing as &quot;liberal&quot; as a weay of defending President Trump&#39;s history of lies is continuing.</p><p>In a May 15 <a href="https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/techwatch/alexander-hall/2020/05/15/liberal-newsguard-expands-partnership-microsoft">post</a>, Alexander Hall huffed that &quot;Liberal website ratings firm NewsGuard has expanded its partnership with Microsoft in order to spread &ldquo;news literacy.&rdquo;You mighr remember NewsGuard from that time WorldNetDail&#39;s Joseph Farah <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2369084/wnds-farah-freaks-out-on-a-factchecker/">had a meltdown</a> when a NewsGuard tried to ask him basic questions about WND&#39;s notoriously unreliable &quot;news&quot; operation. </p><p>Hall offered no actual evidence that NewsGuard is &quot;liberal&quot;; instead he complainws that co-CEO Steven Brill &quot;has reportedly given four times more money to Democrats than to Republicans and added:</p><p>NewsGuard has a history of political partisanship. It has slimed figures like Rush Limbaugh and mischaracterized a post on Limbaugh&#39;s Facebook page. NewsGuard highlighted &ldquo;a link to Limbaugh&rsquo;s site with false claims that the coronavirus was created in a lab as a bioweapon and that it is similar to the common cold.&rdquo; NewsGuard was neither accurate about what he actually said, nor even the date of the post. </p><p>Let&#39;s take a look at that accusation, made in an April 21 <a href="https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/techwatch/corinne-weaver/2020/04/21/microsoft-partner-newsguard-slimes-rush-limbaughs">post</a> by Corinne Weaver, in which she wrote:</p><blockquote><p>A new report from liberal Microsoft partner NewsGuard, &ldquo; <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/superspreaders/" target="_blank">Tracking Facebook&rsquo;s COVID-19 Misinformation &lsquo;Super-spreaders</a>,&rsquo;&rdquo; went after large Facebook pages that &ldquo;repeat, share, and amplify these myths&rdquo; about COVID-19. The second example on the list was Rush Limbaugh&rsquo;s Facebook page, which had shared &ldquo;a link to Limbaugh&rsquo;s site with false claims that the coronavirus was created in a lab as a bioweapon and that it is similar to the common cold.&rdquo;</p><p>That&rsquo;s not what the page said at all. NewsGuard wasn&rsquo;t even accurate about the date of the post. NewsGuard claimed the posting happened on Feb. 24, but linked to Limbaugh&rsquo;s Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RushLimbaugh/posts/3445120082170295" target="_blank">post</a>, published on Feb. 29, 2020. That Limbaugh item stated, &ldquo;I think dealing with the Chinese, there are any number of things that are possible.&rdquo; The link led to a <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/02/26/did-the-chicoms-unleash-the-coronavirus-on-purpose/?fbclid=IwAR1dD1dES50NYtc7QqJxQozbj4YCiueG3uBQ-sqjx_IhneHYlnyWLBf17Uc" target="_blank">transcript</a> of Limbaugh&rsquo;s February&nbsp;26 episode, when a caller asked on his show if COVID-19 was meant to be a response to the United States&rsquo; economic sanctions. Limbaugh&rsquo;s response began with, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;</p></blockquote><p>Both Weaver and NewsGuard are confusing here. Because NewsGuard is focusing on misinformation on Facebook, its initial focus is on Limbaugh&#39;s Facebook post, which was made on Feb. 29 and links to a <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/02/24/overhyped-coronavirus-weaponized-against-trump/?fbclid=IwAR0EsuzvCL0cypRYwRrDPOC8mnJwFVDiSQhrPz1u7DqWCfWP6rewm4PkzJQ">transcript</a> from Limbaugh&#39;s Feb. 24 show. NewsGuard has appended a correction (which Weaver has not acknowledged) fixing the date issues.</p><p>Weaver, however, is misleading about which Limbaugh said. The question to which she refers that Limbaugh answered with an &quot;I don&#39;t know&quot; occurs toward the end of a lengthy rant in which Limbaugh did,in fact, declare that he was &quot;dead right&quot; that &quot;The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.&quot; and that &quot;It probably is a ChiCom laboratory experiment that is in the process of being weaponized.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&quot;</span></p><p>Even the Feb. 26 transcript that was apparently originally linked by NewsGuard is more problematic that&nbsp; Weaver will admit. Limbaugh falsely claimed that &quot;This is the 19th coronavirus&quot; (the number <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html#:~:text=The%20new%20name%20of%20this,2019%2DnCoV&rdquo;.">represents 2019</a>, the year it was discovered), again claimed Coronavirus is a respiratory virus like flu, like the common cold. I&rsquo;m not wrong about this,&quot; and did very much argue that the virus was released by China in retaliation.</p><p>Weaver tried to make her own specious allegation that NewsGuard is &quot;liberal,&quot; largely through guilt by association, citing not only Brill&#39;s alleged political donations but also money donated to it by Poynter and the Knight Foundation, which she dismissed as a &quot;liberal journalism institute&quot; and a &quot;liberal foundation for journalism,&quot; respectively. Her proof that Poynter is &quot;liberal&quot; is that it identified the MRC as biased.</p><p>That&#39;s extremely thin gruel to make such accusations. But the MRC will keep making that gruel because a narrative must be maintained. </p>http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/control.comment?a=render&blog_id=1035280&entry_id=2374120Fri, 5 Jun 2020 15:36:49 -0500ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatchCNS' Chapman Suddenly Finds Chicago Shootings Newsworthy Againhttp://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374119
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374119<br><p><img src="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/cnschapmanchicago20.png" alt="" align="right" />As <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2370974/cns-on-massacres-trumpfluffing-distracting-attention-elsewhere/">we&#39;ve</a> <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2371291/cns-managing-editor-obsesses-over-chicago-violence-to-distract-from-mass-shootings/">documented</a>, one of the things CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman invokes whenever there is bad news that needs to be distracted from is highlighting weekend shootings in Chicago. So, as the number of coronavirus deaths in the United States was <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/s0528-coronavirus-death-toll.html">approaching 100,000</a> toward the end of May, Chapman decided -- for the first time <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/chicago-weekend-20-people-shot-8-killed-413-homicides-so-far-2019">since October</a> -- to devote an <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/index.php/blog/michael-w-chapman/49-shot-chicago-over-memorial-day-weekend">article</a> about shootings in Chicago, even managing to work in a coronavirus angle:</p><blockquote><p>In Chicago, at least 49 people were shot (10 fatally) over the Memorial Day weekend, according to ABC 7 Chicago. It was the worst Memorial Day weekend shooting since 2015.&nbsp;</p><p>&quot;The violence throughout the city on Memorial Day weekend was nothing short of alarming,&rdquo; said Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown on Tuesday.</p><p>[...]</p><p>In addition to the weekend violence, ABC News reported that although the coronavirus &quot;has kept so many people home and temporarily shuttered businesses, homicides in Chicago are on the rise this year. According to police crime statistics posted online, between Jan. 1 and May 24, the city had 200 homicides, compared with 176 during the same period last year. The number of shooting incidents climbed from 679 to 826.&quot; </p></blockquote><p>Chapman didn&#39;t explain why he only occasionally considers shootings in Chicago to be newsworthy. </p>http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/control.comment?a=render&blog_id=1035280&entry_id=2374119Thu, 4 Jun 2020 23:47:02 -0500ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatchMRC Parrots No-Tear-Gas Liehttp://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374117
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374117<br><p><img src="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/teargas.png" alt="" align="right" />The Media Research Center proves itself to be more of a Trump lackey every day. A June 3 <a href="https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/brad-wilmouth/2020/06/03/cnn-likens-anti-riot-actions-tiananmen-square-massacre">post</a> by Brad Wilmouth claimed that CNN commentators &quot;spread misinformation and freaked out over the dispersal of rioters in Lafayette square before President Donald Trump&#39;s speech on the riots across the country,&quot; asserting that &quot;the group incorrectly claimed that the protesters were all peaceful and that tear gas was used against them.&quot; He added:</p><blockquote><p>Introducing the segment at 6:16 a.m. Eastern, co-host John Berman stated that &quot;we all saw attacks on peaceful protesters&quot; who were &quot;tear gassed so that President Trump could take a picture in front of a church.&quot;</p><p>After liberal political commentator Bakari Sellers cracked that &quot;George Wallace is probably looking up at him with a smile,&quot; Camerota also claimed that &quot;peaceful protesters&quot; were &quot;fired on with tear gas&quot; so that &quot;President and his attorney general and Ivanka in her heels and big designer bag could cross the street, and the President could try to figure out how to hold a Bible.&quot;</p><p>But Park Police have denied that the dispersal was done because of the President&#39;s speech or that tear gas was used, noting that the decision was made because some protesters turned violent and were hurling objects at police.</p></blockquote><p>To support this, Wilmouth linked to an MRCTV <a href="https://www.mrctv.org/blog/park-police-dispute-media-reports-tear-gas-was-used-peaceful-protesters-ahead-trumps-church">post</a> by Brittany Hughes, whosimilarly complained that &quot;Multiple news outlets from local outlets to national news platforms&nbsp;ran with reports that the smoke plumes from the police were tear gas, and that the protesters were peaceful&quot; and touted how the Park Police were &quot;disputing the narrative.&quot;</p><p>But as actual news outlets <a href="https://wtop.com/dc/2020/06/some-clarity-a-day-after-reports-of-tear-gas-in-lafayette-square-but-questions-remain/">reported</a>, the Park Police stated that they used smoke canisters and pepper balls -- which, it turns out, are the functional equivalent of tear gas, since pepper balls are designed to be a chemical irritant. Meanwhile, another actual news outlet <a href="https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/tear-gas-washington-dc-protests-st-johns-church/65-7e9a67c7-e40b-47a2-8060-3f7d908139dd">discovered</a> tear gas canisters at the scene, further undermining the Park Police&#39;s story.</p><p>As of this writing, Wilmouth has not corrected his post. </p><p>UPDATE: The Park Police is now <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/6/5/21281604/lafayette-square-white-house-tear-gas-protest">admitting</a> that tear gas was used, but is still denying that it was the ones that used it. Wilmouth&#39;s post still hasn&#39;t been corrected.</p><p>(Photo: <a href="https://twitter.com/NathanBacaTV/status/1268546711452094464">reporter&#39;s Twitter account</a>) </p>http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/control.comment?a=render&blog_id=1035280&entry_id=2374117Fri, 5 Jun 2020 13:09:16 -0500ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatchJack Cashill's Image Rehab of Steve King Didn't Workhttp://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374114
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374114<br><p><img src="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/Cashill_crop-350.jpeg" alt="" align="right" />Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/politics/steve-king-iowa-primary-election/index.html">lost his re-election bid</a> earlier this week, his constituents having grown weary of his history of racist remarks. Not even Jack Cashill&#39;s desperate attempt at image rehab couldn&#39;t stop it.</p><p>In his May 13 WorldNetDaily <a href="https://www.wnd.com/2020/05/rino-dirty-war-trump-proxy-steve-king/">column</a>, Cashill proclaimed King to be &quot;a solid, nine-term conservative whose immigration policies helped shape President Trump&#39;s own&quot; as well as &quot;an unabashed conservative and an unapologetic defender of Western civilization.&quot; That racist stuff? Either lies or misunderstandings.</p><p>Taking aim at a Republican Jewish Coalition attack on King he insisted was &quot;shockingly mendacious and spectacularly self-destructive,&quot; Cashill took issue with the RJC&#39;s claim that King supports &quot;an ideology that says Jews, and other minority groups are inferior,&quot; insisting that &quot;King has long been a champion of Israel and has argued publicly in favor of assimilation and interracial marriage.&quot; </p><p>Cashill then gets the RJC&#39;s name wrong about midway through his column, calling the the &quot;Republican Jewish Committee.&quot; He then complained about a New York Times interview with King and attacked reporter Trip Gabriel, all while framing King&#39;s casual racism as no big deal:</p><blockquote><p>Gabriel&#39;s language was predictably loaded. Trump &quot;demonized immigrants,&quot; he wrote, conflating &quot;demonized&quot; with &quot;described.&quot;</p><p>The president made &quot;demeaning&quot; remarks, inspired &quot;fear&quot; and used &quot;misleading&quot; statistics.</p><p>King&#39;s behavior was even worse. He used &quot;racist language&quot; in the past, &quot;promoted neo-Nazis&quot; on Twitter and was denounced by one anonymous &quot;Republican leader&quot; as a &quot;white supremacist.&quot;</p><p>Gabriel&#39;s link about racist language led to a Salon article detailing comments King made using the common metaphor &quot;pick of the litter&quot; to describe how America should choose the most productive immigrants seeking to come here regardless of race.</p><p>The leftist Salon editors subverted his obviously positive intent and headlined the article, &quot;Rep. Steve King: Immigrants are like dogs.&quot; This was all standard media stuff.</p><p>Gabriel, a former Styles section editor, made King&#39;s life hell with one sentence allegedly said by King but unrecorded by either King or Gabriel.</p><p>Gabriel set up the quote with a fairly accurate observation that King supported &quot;immigrants who enter the country legally and fully assimilate because what matters more than race is &#39;the culture of America&#39; based on values brought to the United States by whites from Europe.&quot;</p><p>Gabriel quoted King on the phrase, &quot;the culture of America,&quot; but not on the phrase, &quot;whites from Europe.&quot; King never talked in terms of race when he talked about culture. Gabriel slipped the &quot;whites&quot; reference in on his own.</p><p>The next sentence attributed to King proved to be the killer: &quot;White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization &ndash; how did that language become offensive.&quot;</p></blockquote><p>Cashill gave King&#39;s language-parsing defense a pass -- &quot;If he had meant to lump all three of those phrases together he would have said &#39;those words&#39; not &#39;that language&#39;&quot; -- then huffed, &quot;Besides, no one has ever sat in a class talking about the merits of white nationalism or white supremacism. Gabriel knew what King meant.&quot;</p><p>Cashill is a bit obsessed with race issues -- a few days before this, he was <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2373952/wnds-cashill-tries-to-run-his-trayvon-playbook-on-ahmaud-arbery/">trying to run</a> his Trayvon Martin playbook on Ahmaud Arbery -- and his views are not in the mainstream. </p>http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/control.comment?a=render&blog_id=1035280&entry_id=2374114Thu, 4 Jun 2020 13:36:03 -0500ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatchCNS Reporter Parses Words To Defend Trumphttp://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374109
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374109<br><p><img src="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/cnstrumptestrate.png" alt="" align="right" />Patrick Goodenough had a reputation as the closest thing to a real reporter left at CNSNews.com. But his work of late has been <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2373934/is-trump-working-as-cns-news-assignment-editor/">veering</a> <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2373981/cns-pretends-trump-writes-all-of-his-own-tweets/">slowly</a> toward the pro-Trump agitprop that dominates much of CNS&#39; original content. Goodenough served up this aggressive defense of Trump in a May 15 <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/article/international/patrick-goodenough/trump-ridiculed-linking-covid-19-cases-testing-rates-there">article</a>:</p><blockquote><p>President Trump was derided on Twitter Thursday for saying that the high number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States was related to the significant increase in testing. But the data suggest that he is right.</p><p>[...]</p><p>In saying, &ldquo;If we didn&rsquo;t do any testing, we would have very few cases,&rdquo; Trump clearly meant that if testing was not being carried out, then many cases would be going unconfirmed and unreported &ndash; not that they would not exist.</p><p>By the same token, in saying, &ldquo;When you test, you have a case,&rdquo; he self-evidently did not mean that the testing causes the case.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Jennifer Mercieca, who teaches in the Department of Communication at Texas A&amp;M University, tweeted</p><p>(Trump did not say that the test <em>causes</em> the case.)</p></blockquote><p>Goodenough cranked out another word-parsing pro-Trump defense <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/article/international/patrick-goodenough/medical-journal-disputes-trumps-claim-who-misstates-what">on May 20</a>:</p><blockquote><p>A leading medical journal on Tuesday took issue with President Trump for citing its research in a letter to the World Health Organization &ndash; but evidently misinterpreted what Trump had written.</p><p>In his letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom, Trump called for major reforms, failing which the organization would lose U.S. funding permanently, he warned, and the U.S. could even withdraw altogether.</p><p>Outlining his concerns about WHO&rsquo;s response to the coronavirus outbreak, Trump wrote that WHO &ldquo;consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal.&rdquo;</p><p><em>The Lancet</em> in a statement Tuesday called Trump&rsquo;s comment &ldquo;factually incorrect,&rdquo; and added that it had &ldquo;published no report in December, 2019, referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China.&rdquo;</p>Trump did not, however, say the relevant reports in <em>The Lancet</em> had been published in December.<p>In referring to December, he was clearly speaking about the month during which the coronavirus was spreading in Wuhan &ndash; according to credible reports, including those published in<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><em style="box-sizing: border-box">The Lancet</em>.</p></blockquote><p>But Goodenough suddenly wasn&#39;t interested in word-parsing or context in a June 1 <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/patrick-goodenough/cair-wants-twitter-suspend-trump-racist-use-word-thugs-obama">article</a>, since the goal was to play guilt-by-association with former President Obama:</p><blockquote><p>The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is demanding that Twitter suspend President Trump&rsquo;s &ldquo;racist&rdquo; account, over his recent tweeted warning that looters exploiting protests sparked by the death of George Floyd risk being shot.</p><p>CAIR based its charge that the warning amounted to a &ldquo;racist threat of violence&rdquo; on the fact that Trump used the word &ldquo;thugs&rdquo; to describe those looting, vandalizing and torching businesses.</p><p>&ldquo;Thugs,&rdquo; explained CAIR, is &ldquo;a race-coded word that bigoted politicians use to negatively describe African-American protestors.&rdquo;</p><p>[...]</p><p>Five years ago, President Obama used the same word in connection with those looting and destroying businesses in Baltimore, amid protests over the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died of a spinal-cord injury while in police custody.</p><p>&ldquo;A handful of criminals and thugs who tore up the place,&rdquo; were the words Obama used to describe the perpetrators of the violent behavior.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Trump, who just weeks later [in 2015] would formal announce his presidential run, scoffed at the criticism around the use of the word.</p><p>&ldquo;They now say using the word &lsquo;thug&rsquo; is, like so many other words, not politically correct (even though Obama uses it),&rdquo; he tweeted. &ldquo;It is racist. BULL!&rdquo;</p></blockquote><p>For some reason, Goodenough declined to clarify that, unlike Trump, Obama did not use the word &quot;thug&quot; on Twitter. </p>http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/control.comment?a=render&blog_id=1035280&entry_id=2374109Wed, 3 Jun 2020 23:37:01 -0500ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatchAIM Chief Fails In Attacking Newspapers As 'Hard Left,' Unworthy of Bailouthttp://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374107
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374107<br><p><img src="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/aimratings-clear-bias-400.png" alt="" align="right" />Accuracy in Media is attempting to regain what little relevance it had and maybe create some buzz by <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2373788/aim-roots-for-the-media-to-die-to-save-it/">railing against</a> the idea of treating the media like every other business in America that is eligible for coronavirus relief money. Of course, AIM simply wants the non-conservative media to die any way it can. The latest step in this is a May 22 <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/too-biased-to-fail">op-ed</a> by AIM president Adam Guillette pubished by the Washington Examiner.</p><p>Since Guillette, like most right-wing media critics, has never worked a day in the media he attacks -- he came to AIM from the discredited right-wing provocateurs at <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2371595/aim-hires-exproject-veritas-staffer-as-new-president/">Project Veritas</a> -- he doesn&#39;t understand how the media busienss works; he&#39;s too caught up in his biases. He began by ranting:</p><blockquote><p>If Lenin said that capitalists &ldquo;will sell us the rope we use to hang them,&rdquo; newspapers are saying that conservatives will fund the ink they use to smear them.</p><p>Bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress have now signed on for a proposed media bailout. This isn&rsquo;t a bailout for smaller newspapers and television stations. Those businesses were already eligible for the Payroll Protection Program, and many of them took advantage of it &mdash; in a big way.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p><p>The <em>Seattle Times</em> took $9.9 million tax dollars, and the <em>Tampa Bay Times</em><span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>bagged $8.5 million. Two of the most hard-left newspapers in America didn&rsquo;t even hesitate before grabbing their Trump Bucks.</p></blockquote><p>Needless to say, Guillette offers no evidence that either of those newspapers is &quot;hard left&quot; -- he simply assumes so because they don&#39;t have a right-wing bias. </p><p>Guillette then attacked the newspaper chain McClatchy for filing for bankruptcy. He continued to whine:</p><blockquote><p>For years, conservatives bemoaned how far left their local newspapers shifted. Little by little, the editorial boards of nearly every local newspaper were taken over by progressives. Then the editorializing started spreading to each article. In response to their complaints, conservatives were always told, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a private company, they can do what they want!&rdquo;<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p><p>But now we&rsquo;ve learned that alienating a large portion of your marketplace isn&rsquo;t a winning business strategy. Why, then, should customers be forced to pay for a product they&rsquo;ve already rejected?</p><p>Of course, the newspapers claim their bias isn&rsquo;t the problem. They blame the internet. Countless business models have been upended by the internet; should we bail out each of them? Should we have bailed out stone tablet makers after the invention of the printing press?</p></blockquote><p>If Guillette is going to complain that newspapers&#39; purported liberal bias are not a &quot;winning business strategy&quot; then he must also admit that explicitly conservative newspapers were <em>never</em> a &quot;winning business strategy.&quot; As we&#39;ve <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2013/bozellpapers.html">documented</a>, newspapers like the Washington Times, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and New York Post have always been failures in the market and kept alive only because they were owned by deep-pocketed right-wing owners -- even in the pre-internet years when mainstream newspaper reliably turned profits. Even the publication where Guillette&#39;s op-ed appears, the Washington Examiner, is the remnant of a daily newspaper that failed after a new owner, Philip Anschutz, infused it with right-wing bias. </p><p>In order to be an effective critic, one must understand what he is criticizing. Guillette clearly doesn&#39;t. </p>http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/control.comment?a=render&blog_id=1035280&entry_id=2374107Wed, 3 Jun 2020 21:01:58 -0500ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatchSHOCK: MRC Writers Stop Hating CNN For A Few Secondshttp://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374104
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374104<br><p><img src="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/houckcnntweet.png" alt="" align="right" />The Twitter feeds of Media Research Center writer <a href="https://twitter.com/NickFondacaro">Nicholas Fondcaro</a> and NewsBusters managing editor <a href="https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck">Curtis Houck</a> are typically filled with hate and bile toward the MRC&#39;s usual targets, but particularly CNN -- they are paid well for their hate and bile after all. But they committed a minor sin in the eyes of their employer: they expressed sympathy toward CNN over the weekend when correspondent Omar Jimenez was arrested for no reason by Minnesota State Police while covering the unrest in Minneapolis following the police-custody death of George Floyd.</p><p>Houck <a href="https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1266361591454367744">wrote</a>: &quot;This is infuriating and stupid. What a horrible look for the Minnesota State Police. Absolutely inexcusable. It&#39;s pretty clear they weren&#39;t protesters. Everyone knows how blunt, possibly harsh, and maybe nasty I&#39;ve been to CNN. But arresting Omar Jimenez or anyone reporting? No.&quot; Fondacaro similarly <a href="https://twitter.com/NickFondacaro/status/1266376297044774914">wrote</a>: &quot;Unbelievable! I&rsquo;m not a fan of CNN but this is BS and wrong! The crew was respectfully asking police where they wanted them to move so they could stay out of the way of Minnesota State Police, and they get arrested.&quot; </p><p>None of this supposed concern made it to the pages of NewsBusters, one sign that this expression of sympathy was either utterly phony or a mistake for which they had to answer to their MRC overlords. Antoher sign: Fondacaro and Houck were soon bashing CNN as usual. </p><p>A few hours later, Fondacaro was <a href="https://twitter.com/NickFondacaro/status/1266242282069487617">viciously mocking</a> CNN anchor Brian Stelter as &quot;Pennywise&quot; and a &quot;<a href="https://twitter.com/NickFondacaro/status/1266598844021825538">clown</a>,&quot; ranting that the channel is trying to &quot;warp reality,&quot; and <a href="https://twitter.com/NickFondacaro/status/1266599319815294978">bizarrely blaming</a> CNN for a Fox News reporter getting heckled (even though, <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/2374090/double-standard-mrc-frets-over-heckling-of-fox-news-reporter-but-it-cheered-cnn-sucks-chants/">as we&#39;ve documented</a>, he and his MRC coworkers spent years egging on people to yell &quot;CNN sucks!&quot; at CNN correspondents).</p><p>Houck, meanwhile, went into <a href="https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1266444223936593922">abusive-spouse mode</a> a few hours later by blaming CNN itself and the media in general for losing his sympathy for the CNN reporters getting arrested: </p><blockquote><p>See, this is how the media so often throw good will, which was absolutely there this morning b/c it was awful. </p><p> Perhaps the biggest lie about the news media is that their insistence that they don&#39;t like being a part of the story. They love it and relish it, especially CNN. </p></blockquote><p>It&#39;s probably closer to the truth to point out that Houck has no good will whatsoever toward CNN and any sympathy was always going to be fleeting (if not entirely manufactured). </p><p>The MRC lets Houck&#39;s and Fondacaro&#39;s increasingly irrational anti-CNN rage go unabated, it&#39;s spilling over into actual MRC posts, and it seems everyone&#39;s totally cool with that. </p>http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/control.comment?a=render&blog_id=1035280&entry_id=2374104Wed, 3 Jun 2020 13:28:04 -0500ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatchNEW ARTICLE -- WND's Coronavirus Conspiracies: The Dubious Docshttp://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374101
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2374101<br>WorldNetDaily&#39;s stable of fringe physicians -- plus a couple new ones -- serve up the usual questionable advice (about hydroxychloroquine) and fearmongering (about a possible vaccine). <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2020/wndcorona.html">Read more &gt;&gt;</a>http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/control.comment?a=render&blog_id=1035280&entry_id=2374101Tue, 2 Jun 2020 23:25:44 -0500ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch